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Kathmandu

A travel to Tibet, that enigmatic and mysterious country (now under Chinese sovereignty), has been for years in my mind. In summer 2007 I set off along with my friend Albert Farré to New Delhi, in order to reach the kingdom of the Snow Lion through Nepal. We didn’t intend to spend too much time nor in India, neither in Nepal. However, unknown circumstances didn’t let us go far from Kathmandu, Nepali’s capital. None agency organised expeditions to Tibet that summer: political struggles, closed roads due to implementation... We will never know as the travel agencies themselves even didn’t know what was happening and why the Chinese government didn’t allow to enter tourists to Tibet.

Although feeling disappointed because our aim would be impossible to reach, we re adapted our holidays to travel and discover that little country surrounded by the highest mountains of the World. Nepal is not very big but it offers plenty of attractions to your senses and feelings. Kathmandu, in the first instance, offers you a mixture of cultures and religions hard to find in other places. I discovered that city rambling through the streets and visiting some schools just to get an idea of how children are educated in a country famous for its child prostitution.

I mainly discovered smiles in the streets and in classrooms, and polite children full of curiosity of what I was doing. However, poverty is everywhere and malnutrition is extended (specially in rural areas of the country). So is child prostitution, although you cannot see it easily. The aim of this publication is that it has no aim: neither show the happy face of a poor country, nor denounce the evil life of child prostitution. Just show what I see rambling through the streets of Kathmandu.